8.25.2016

Take 2 of 3: "Purple Noon" (1960)

Has
there ever been a bad film adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel?Having not seen Liliana Cavani’s Ripley’s Game I can’t speak to its
merits—but even if it may be a dud we still have Strangers on a Train, The American Friend, The Talented Mr.
Ripley, and Carol.And Purple
Noon (1960, dir. Rene Clement), one of the earliest attempts at adapting
Highsmith for the movies, with Alain Delon as jet-setting criminal Tom
Ripley.Cool and comfortable within the
private world of his own amorality, Delon’s Ripley floats through the film, his
very blandness allowing him to adapt, chameleon-like, to each situation in
which he finds himself (and to appropriate others’ identities whenever
convenient).Purple Noon downplays the homoeroticism of the source text pretty
significantly, even going so far as to invent a tryst (albeit a queerly
triangulated one) between Ripley and his best friend’s girl.It alsorewrites the ending of Highsmith’s novel in order to punish Ripley, and in
so doing invents a somewhat clunky twist—though it didn’t bother me any more
than do the often-clunky denouements of
any number of classic Hollywood noirs.
The film as a whole is involving and pretty and sexy enough to withstand a few
false notes.